Maids in College?

I'm flabbergasted. No, not at the thought of some virgins on campus. (Though there was a legend at my university.  The Arts quad had statutes of the two founders seated opposite each other.  Supposedly if a virgin walked across the quad at midnight, the statutes would rise, walk to the center and bow, and then return to their seats.)

But the Post has an article on social networking and sports recruiting, focusing on a top athlete who tweets his visits to campuses and football coaches who follow his tweets.  And this sentence blew my mind:

" He wrote of being impressed that UCLA has maids cleaning dorm rooms"

Whatever happened to kids cleaning their own rooms? And if it's an athletic dormitory, how about coaches enforcing rules.  

Complaints About SURE

I've resolved I'm not trying to understand SURE.  This is the first paragraph from Farm Policy today:

DTN Executive Editor Marcia Zarley Taylor reported yesterday at the Minding Ag’s Business Blog that, “When Congress wrote what rational people would consider the most complex formula yet for farm disaster aid in the 2008 Farm Act, it was supposed to (1) be a fairer system; (2) compensate people who’d experienced whole farm revenue loss, not a yield loss on a single crop as past farm programs did; (3) pay higher rates to those with better crop insurance coverage. In other words, reward farmers who paid the high premiums for higher levels of coverage. But as I reported in a story on DTN today, these principles aren’t working as the Farm Service Agency struggles to administer the 2008 disaster program.

The question is whether the bureaucrats and Congress can work the bugs out before 2012.

New Health Hazard Identified

By Ta-Nehisi Coates:
"Fully half of the life-span gap between African-Americans and whites is due to African-Americans having to endure punditry about "The Blacks." (From a post on the latest Phyllis Schafly quote.)

Flash: Rising Rate of Blindness in the U.S.

From this post:

Far fewer parents describe their children as overweight or obese than we see in the actual population. Specifically, the GQR poll showed even parents who volunteer their children's height and weight underreported whether they also view them as overweight or obese. Similarly, this McClatchy-Ipsos poll shows far fewer reporting a personal obesity issue or one in their own family than is actually true among the population.

The only rational explanation is that Americans are losing their eyesight much more rapidly than anyone realizes.

Rural Areas the New Blacks?

Back in the day, in Vietnam, black Americans were disproportionately 11B's (the MOS for rifleman) and suffered casualties in excess of their proportion of the population.  Today it seems men and women from rural areas, especially upper Midwest and Great Plains, are suffering casualties in excess of their proportion of the population.

"The study does not look into reasons why soldiers from rural areas have experienced a higher death rate in the Iraq War"

My memory is the 1960's military, at least the Army, was draft-based.  People with the poorest scores on the test tended to end up as 11B's.  Blacks were drafted relatively equally with whites but had the poorer education and poorer scores, so ended up in the most dangerous positions.

When Nixon took us off the draft, blacks would enlist for the opportunity.I remember reading somewhere blacks now are more heavily concentrated in the Army's "tail"--the administrative support services.  As a result, although the current wars are dangerous for truck drivers, the casualty rate for blacks is probably less than their proportion, certainly less than for rural areas.  (Given the loss of black farms over 40 years, I assume without checking that the black population is disproportionately urban and suburban.)

I'm a bit amused by the quote. The illustrious Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, has a book arguing that the South, particularly the Appalachians, is home to natural-born fighters, based on their Scots-Irish heritage.  Maybe the area has lost its edge, in favor of the German-Scandinavian Lutherans of the upper Midwest/Plains.  

I'd think in reality the key question is economic opportunity.  In the past blacks and the upcountry whites Webb writes about have had little opportunity, so ended up as fighters.  In the present the northern rural areas have little opportunity, so end up as fighters.  (In the remote past, Scots and Irish had little opportunity, so ended up as fighters.) And immigrants end up as fighters.

There's a more troubling possibility however. Blacks are disproportionately imprisoned. And, for those who watched The Wire, the prisoners include some of the most talented leaders.  I think that's a big change since the 1960's, so it's possible if academicians are using as their baseline the number of people 18 and over they're getting a different result than if they used the number of people not institutionalized and with no criminal record 18 and over.

Wine at the Pump

The French may be very regimented, but getting wine at the pump (a la gas pump) is something only they could dream of.

An Administrative Disaster Program?

That's what Sen. Lincoln claims the White House has offered, $1.5 billion of disaster aid done administratively, to get past the roadblocks to the legislative package for small business.  See this Farm Policy report. 

Having been in USDA in 1983 when Reagan's people pulled a land retirement program out of their hat without Congressional authority, I wouldn't bet against it.  On the other, damned if I can imagine how they'll do it.  The effect is psychological--it looks very doubtful Lincoln can win reelection, so the White House is showing they'll run risks to help their supporters.

Speaking of Optimism--Fred Brooks

My previous post was on optimism--Fred Brooks wrote a great book in this area 35 years ago: The Mythical Man-Month.  He has another out, which should be good. The Design of Design.  It's on my Christmas wish list.

Overconfidence Among the Professionals

This post reports on a study showing lawyers are overconfident in predicting the outcome of their cases.  I believe the recent Atul Gawande article in the New Yorker said that doctors are overly optimistic in predicting how long their patients will live.  IT professionals routinely promise to complete projects faster and cheaper than they can (see this on the FBI's Sentinel program).  Military professionals often are overly optimistic in predicting the outcome of military operations. Politicians over promise the results of their votes. Economists, except for Tyler Cowen, are overly sure of the outcome of their proposed policies.

Think there's a pattern here?

[Updated: A day late and a dollar short, Professor Robin Hanson comes to the same conclusion.]

The Final Word for Today

From Tyler Cowen:

We still don't know what we are doing.

I respond to honesty.